Date: w. 1936, 1938

"The year plunges into night / and the heart plunges / lower than night // to an empty, windswept place / without sun, stars or moon / but a peculiar light as of thought // that spins a dark fire-- / whirling upon itself until, / in the cold, it kindles // to make a man aware of nothing / that he...

— Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963)

Date: 1940

"Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work."

— Raphaelson, Samson (1894-1983)

Date: 1949

"And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp."

— Orwell, George (1903-1950)

Date: 1964

"Industrious, affable, having brain on fire, / Henry perplexed himself."

— Berryman, John [b. John Allyn Smith, Jr.] (1914-1972)

Date: 1966

"Deep in the recesses of my brain... a tiny red-hot little flame began to grow."

— Shepherd, Jean; Bob Clark, Leigh Brown

Date: 1984

"Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure small coal of his anger."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1988

"For nearly fifty years, in the dark, moviegoers burn imagination to heat up reality."

— Godard, Jean-Luc (b. 1930)

Date: 1996

"You would certainly feel stimulated, since one of your brain's main "brakes" would be disabled. But other brakes, such as GABA, would still be functioning and in the absence of any extra direct stimulants overall activity wouldn't kindle into the kind of neural conflagration that can occur with ...

— Braun, Stephen

Date: 2000

"Mad thoughts. Sparks from the wheel."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"I glimpsed a molten core to consciousness, a protean heat where everything could be reshaped. Yes, a molten core, like the core of the earth, deeper than the deposits of civilisation, beyond the complacencies of archaeology."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)